U.S. frets over Albanian chemical arsenal

TIRANA, Albania, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. officials are concerned Albania's arsenal of hundreds of canisters of chemical weapons is vulnerable to terrorists, the Washington Post reported.

In the mid-1970s, the late Marxist dictator Enver Hoxha purchased several hundred canisters of lethal chemicals from China, including yperite, or sulfur mustard, one of the chemicals used by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to slaughter thousands of Kurdish civilians in the 1980s, as well as lewisite and adamsite, which are based on arsenic.

The 16-ton stash hidden in a bunker less than 25 miles from the capital, Tirana, was forgotten until several months ago. Now, with the help of the United States and United Nations, the Albanian government is planning to neutralize and dispose of the stockpile.

"Just as you have to worry about what a crazy man is thinking in a cave in Afghanistan, you also have to worry about what happens to these weapons in places like Albania and North Korea," said Joseph Cirincione, a director of the Non-proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It's not that the Albanians would use them, but a terrorist group could learn of them and then try to pick the low-hanging fruit."